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Who IS the target market for something like this? It's almost as big as a phone, and costs as much as many phones... why would anyone use this instead of their

Who IS the target market for something like this? It's almost as big as a phone, and costs as much as many phones... why would anyone use this instead of their phone? I guess maybe if you have a giant phablet and want something more portable (or more disposable, but it's still $400) for workouts or that kind of thing? Maybe if you're addicted to social media and so the fact that it can't do anything besides play music is a feature?

patates 4y ago
> the fact that it can't do anything besides play music is a feature? It seems to not have a modem but it does have the play store and wi-fi, so...
makeitdouble 4y ago
Me actually. I finally made the switch to a phone without headphone jack last year. I like the phone, but the pretty expensive bluetooth headphones I tried don't sound as great as my beaten year old wired ones. There's many places where I don't care about having a dangling wire: at home watching tv/movies, while working at my desk, or in public libraries for instance. A small audio player that work with my wired headphones would be workable, I l'm seriously thinking about it if moving music in and out is easy enough.
mike_d 4y ago
> Who IS the target market for something like this? Some people work in environments where you can't have "smart" devices. I could see this squeaking by (for example you can have some single purpose devices like Garmin watches, but not Apple watches with wifi and cellular). It might be good for airplanes too if you want something to drive your headphones without draining your battery, but I guess in-seat power has kinda solved that already.
nmfisher 4y ago
I don't have this exact model, but I did have two earlier iterations of the Walkman which I liked for three reasons: 1) it's a lot lighter than a phone, so convenient to take running 2) the battery lasts days (if not weeks) rather than a single day 3) it has a wired headphone jack, so I don't have to use Bluetooth earbuds that regularly fall out or disconnect. I don't recall either model being that expensive though.
- tempestn 4y ago
  Good points. The battery thing seems like a big one for someone who travels a lot especially. Headphone jack is nice, but I find a USB adapter works fine when I want to use wired headphones with my phone. Size/weight probably depends on the size of your phone. I tend to prefer smaller phones, so to me most of what people use today is a giant "phablet".
- prmoustache 4y ago
  That thing is running android. The battery usage on android phone is based on network access. If you install as many apps as you do on this walkman than on a regular mobile phone, it won't last better. Also if like me you don't install any social media app or anything that connect on a regular basis to some service and play music stored locally on your sdcard your smartphone will also last for days. I can understand wanting to use an affordable tiny ipad nano like device instead of a smartphone. But I don't understand this, being 3 times more expensive than a decent entry level smartphone unless you want to use it with high quality over the ears noise cancelling headphones. The physical buttons do not even seem to be ergonomically placed.
  - Tams80 4y ago
    Why would you install as many apps as a smartphone? Hell, for many people why would they even have wi-fi on?
    - prmoustache 4y ago
      What I meant is it is not the device but the usage that makes the battery last or not and it is fairly easy to have a smartphone running for days.
tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
> Who IS the target market for something like this? It's almost as big as a phone, and costs as much as many phones... Me, but I aint paying $800 for it (if I understood the article correctly). Give me a walkman made specifically for listening to music with 250GB+ and without all the pain to move music onto and off of the device and can last _weeks_ on a single charge with regular use and I would purchase the shit out of it. I feel like a lot of people don't realize just how leashed they are with modern phones. My favorite phone ever is an old Palm phone that I still have to this day because I refuse to throw it away. It's smaller than the original SE, far lighter, and could last up to two weeks on a single charge. Contrast that with the 3rd gen SE I have now and I'd give it up in a heartbeat if something like that Palm arrived. But it won't, so moving the music playing experience off of the phone is a good step to loosening that leash.
- Narishma 4y ago
  > Me, but I aint paying $800 for it (if I understood the article correctly). That's the pro model. The consumer version is half that.
ghusto 4y ago
Potentially me, but this time not. My criteria is heavy on "do one thing well". I want something without internet, "apps", a convoluted OS, and basically all the other things that make phones a Swiss army knife. Those things aren't free, they come with a cost which I'm not willing to pay; attention, bugs, distraction-as-a-service. Also, I'm not 100% on this because I haven't tested it, but I think the output I get from FLAC files on my music device is better than my phone. Yes, I'm also the type who enjoys a separate camera. There's a piece of mind to dedicated devices I was robbed of for a while with the the phone. Now having said all this, the real answer to your question is; nobody, because this device seems to be a phone :/
- tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
  > the real answer to your question is; nobody, because this device seems to be a phone Well said, that's _exactly_ how I feel. I would 100% purchase a dedicated music device, but it can't be a glorified phone (I don't even like the smartscreen in the article) with a phones problems.
- zbuf 4y ago
  > real answer to your question is; nobody, because this device seems to be a phone :/ The terrible error here is including the Android home screen in the marketing materials. By all means base it on Android, but I never want to see anything like that on a "stand alone" device. Eliminating any generic UI should have been a priority from the go because it completely changes the sentiment around the device.
  - Tams80 4y ago
    You could just... I don't know... not leave the Walkman app and turn off the wi-fi.
pleb_nz 4y ago
I often leave my phone at home after hours and on the weekend. This is a perfect solution.
brundolf 4y ago
I'm sure this appeals to a market segment: > Anyway, back to this $800 model. Unlike regular phone equipment, this has a proper audio amplifier with big, beefy capacitors to power the analog audio output. That makes it much bigger than the A300, at 72.6×132 mm and a whopping 17 mm thick. It also has two audio outs: a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack and a 4.4 mm "balanced" audio jack, which is used by some high-end audio equipment. It just feels weird to cheap out on storage, of all things, on an $800 device in 2023
- tempestn 4y ago
  Yeah, I get the audiophile one. (I mean, I don't get it really, but I get that there are people who do.) But the cheaper (but still expensive) one didn't seem to offer much. As many people mentioned though, battery life is a compelling one.
bakugo 4y ago
The target market is people who want a device with a headphone jack, an SD card slot and a good DAC. The number of phones that include these features nowadays is small.

patates 4y ago

> the fact that it can't do anything besides play music is a feature? It seems to not have a modem but it does have the play store and wi-fi, so...

makeitdouble 4y ago

Me actually. I finally made the switch to a phone without headphone jack last year. I like the phone, but the pretty expensive bluetooth headphones I tried don't sound as great as my beaten year old wired ones. There's many places where I don't care about having a dangling wire: at home watching tv/movies, while working at my desk, or in public libraries for instance. A small audio player that work with my wired headphones would be workable, I l'm seriously thinking about it if moving music in and out is easy enough.

mike_d 4y ago

> Who IS the target market for something like this? Some people work in environments where you can't have "smart" devices. I could see this squeaking by (for example you can have some single purpose devices like Garmin watches, but not Apple watches with wifi and cellular). It might be good for airplanes too if you want something to drive your headphones without draining your battery, but I guess in-seat power has kinda solved that already.

nmfisher 4y ago

I don't have this exact model, but I did have two earlier iterations of the Walkman which I liked for three reasons: 1) it's a lot lighter than a phone, so convenient to take running 2) the battery lasts days (if not weeks) rather than a single day 3) it has a wired headphone jack, so I don't have to use Bluetooth earbuds that regularly fall out or disconnect. I don't recall either model being that expensive though.

tempestn 4y ago
Good points. The battery thing seems like a big one for someone who travels a lot especially. Headphone jack is nice, but I find a USB adapter works fine when I want to use wired headphones with my phone. Size/weight probably depends on the size of your phone. I tend to prefer smaller phones, so to me most of what people use today is a giant "phablet".
prmoustache 4y ago
That thing is running android. The battery usage on android phone is based on network access. If you install as many apps as you do on this walkman than on a regular mobile phone, it won't last better. Also if like me you don't install any social media app or anything that connect on a regular basis to some service and play music stored locally on your sdcard your smartphone will also last for days. I can understand wanting to use an affordable tiny ipad nano like device instead of a smartphone. But I don't understand this, being 3 times more expensive than a decent entry level smartphone unless you want to use it with high quality over the ears noise cancelling headphones. The physical buttons do not even seem to be ergonomically placed.
- Tams80 4y ago
  Why would you install as many apps as a smartphone? Hell, for many people why would they even have wi-fi on?
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    What I meant is it is not the device but the usage that makes the battery last or not and it is fairly easy to have a smartphone running for days.

tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago

> Who IS the target market for something like this? It's almost as big as a phone, and costs as much as many phones... Me, but I aint paying $800 for it (if I understood the article correctly). Give me a walkman made specifically for listening to music with 250GB+ and without all the pain to move music onto and off of the device and can last _weeks_ on a single charge with regular use and I would purchase the shit out of it. I feel like a lot of people don't realize just how leashed they are with modern phones. My favorite phone ever is an old Palm phone that I still have to this day because I refuse to throw it away. It's smaller than the original SE, far lighter, and could last up to two weeks on a single charge. Contrast that with the 3rd gen SE I have now and I'd give it up in a heartbeat if something like that Palm arrived. But it won't, so moving the music playing experience off of the phone is a good step to loosening that leash.

Narishma 4y ago
> Me, but I aint paying $800 for it (if I understood the article correctly). That's the pro model. The consumer version is half that.

ghusto 4y ago

Potentially me, but this time not. My criteria is heavy on "do one thing well". I want something without internet, "apps", a convoluted OS, and basically all the other things that make phones a Swiss army knife. Those things aren't free, they come with a cost which I'm not willing to pay; attention, bugs, distraction-as-a-service. Also, I'm not 100% on this because I haven't tested it, but I think the output I get from FLAC files on my music device is better than my phone. Yes, I'm also the type who enjoys a separate camera. There's a piece of mind to dedicated devices I was robbed of for a while with the the phone. Now having said all this, the real answer to your question is; nobody, because this device seems to be a phone :/

tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
> the real answer to your question is; nobody, because this device seems to be a phone Well said, that's _exactly_ how I feel. I would 100% purchase a dedicated music device, but it can't be a glorified phone (I don't even like the smartscreen in the article) with a phones problems.
zbuf 4y ago
> real answer to your question is; nobody, because this device seems to be a phone :/ The terrible error here is including the Android home screen in the marketing materials. By all means base it on Android, but I never want to see anything like that on a "stand alone" device. Eliminating any generic UI should have been a priority from the go because it completely changes the sentiment around the device.
- Tams80 4y ago
  You could just... I don't know... not leave the Walkman app and turn off the wi-fi.

pleb_nz 4y ago

I often leave my phone at home after hours and on the weekend. This is a perfect solution.

brundolf 4y ago

I'm sure this appeals to a market segment: > Anyway, back to this $800 model. Unlike regular phone equipment, this has a proper audio amplifier with big, beefy capacitors to power the analog audio output. That makes it much bigger than the A300, at 72.6×132 mm and a whopping 17 mm thick. It also has two audio outs: a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack and a 4.4 mm "balanced" audio jack, which is used by some high-end audio equipment. It just feels weird to cheap out on storage, of all things, on an $800 device in 2023

tempestn 4y ago
Yeah, I get the audiophile one. (I mean, I don't get it really, but I get that there are people who do.) But the cheaper (but still expensive) one didn't seem to offer much. As many people mentioned though, battery life is a compelling one.

bakugo 4y ago

The target market is people who want a device with a headphone jack, an SD card slot and a good DAC. The number of phones that include these features nowadays is small.